Scanmem tutorial

For this guide I went with The Binding of Isaac. For other programs start different things and change the PiD search value in grep

Do you see everyone else showing off with those 999 coins in their greed machine whilst using Cheat Engine? Do you hate not being able to that because you are running a Linux system? Yes? Then this guide may be for you! As there is a good alternative for CE available! It’s called scanmem! This guide will try to let you get started with it and explains on how to use this useful tool!

Step 1 Install scanmem

Install scanmem on your system. This varies on your distro. Use your favorite package manager to install it. For example: I’m using Lubuntu (low usage Ubuntu variant) I would run this:

sudo apt-get install scanmem

If you do not have a distro that comes with a package manager, you will need to compile manually:

https://github.com/scanmem/scanmem

Don’t bother with installing the GUI. This guide deals with the CLI (commandline interface only). The GUI is called gameconqueror and can be installed through similair ways.

Step 2 Start BoI

Boot up The Binding Of Isaac Rebirth/Afterbirth. No need to do much here. Just boot it.

Step 3 Get a PiD

Whilst the game is running open a Terminal window. Type this command in it:

ps ax

grep isaac

Write down the output of this process. Note that there are two processes being launched, you will want isaac.x64 or isaac.i386, not the other one.

An explanation: ps ax lists process id’s and grep narrows down the output to contain only lines with the word ‘isaac’ in it.

Step 3 Start scanmem and tell the PiD

In the same terminal window run

sudo scanmem

Sudo is required because scanmem doesn’t work properly without root. Afterwards run this:

pid <the number that you got from step 3>
This will give you some random output listing the mappings, I got 30.

Step 4 Value editing

Get to the value you want to edit. I’m going for the greed machine in this example. Get to the greed machine. Once you get there, switch back to your Terminal window which still should have scanmem open and enter the following:

This will give a familiar listing: The amount of items it found. From now on, it’s a case of narrowing it down. The following keys can be used:

= If your value remains the same. Run this one a few times before narrowing down results with changing values. It makes stuff a lot easier.
> For an increasing value, run this command.
< For a decreasing value, run this command.

For each change you will get a listing of how many results remain. Keep narrowing it down by adding one coin to the machine in this case and running > afterwards in your Terminal.

Eventually you will get to 1 result. At this point the scanmem will inform you you can set the value. Use the following command to do that: